Transcranial direct current stimulation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex improves attentional bias in mobile phone addicts

doi:10.12307/2023.574

Abstract

Abstract: BACKGROUND: Transcranial direct current stimulation plays a significant role in the correction of addictive behaviors. Behavioral addiction is often accompanied by attentional bias to habitual behaviors of specific stimuli. As a kind of behavioral addiction, mobile phone addiction is no exception.
OBJECTIVE: To explore the effect of transcranial direct current stimulation on the attentional bias of mobile phone addicts through the transcranial direct current stimulation (2 mA, 20 minutes) of the left dorsolateral prefrontal lobe with cathode as the center pole.
METHODS: A total of 39 health college students from Tianjin University of Sport were recruited as experimental subjects. Among them, 21 were assigned into mobile phone addiction group and 18 assigned into non-mobile phone addiction groups. All the subjects underwent transcranial direct current stimulation (2 mA, 20 minutes) of the left dorsolateral prefrontal lobe with cathode as the center pole, at a 2×3 mixed design. The interventional effects were demonstrated from three aspects: physiological indicators, behavioral response indicators, and eye movement indicators.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: There were no significant changes in heart rate and blood pressure before and after intervention. Before intervention, compared with the non-mobile phone addiction group, the mobile phone addiction group showed significantly longer response time and lower accuracy in the dot-probe task (P < 0.05). After intervention, the response time and accuracy of the mobile phone addiction group were both significantly improved (P < 0.05). Before intervention, there were significant differences in total fixation times, total fixation time, fixation correction time, saccade correction time, forward saccade time, and saccade times between the mobile phone addiction group and the non-mobile phone addiction group in the anti-saccade task (P < 0.05).
After intervention, the total fixation times, total fixation time, fixation correction time, saccade correction time, forward saccade, and saccade times were all improved in the mobile phone addiction group compared with those before the intervention (P < 0.05). To conclude, transcranial direct current stimulation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex can improve attentional bias in mobile phone addicts.

Key words: transcranial direct current stimulation, dorsolateral prefrontal lobe, attentional bias, mobile phone addiction, behavioral response

CLC Number:

Jiang Xuemin, Wang Yu, Sun Yanlin. Transcranial direct current stimulation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex improves attentional bias in mobile phone addicts[J]. Chinese Journal of Tissue Engineering Research, 2023, 27(23): 3736-3741.

Figures/Tables 7

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